1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to article classification, and in particular, to methods and systems for classifying articles based on selected article characteristics and for processing the articles based on selected article characteristics.
2. Description of the Related Art
At least in part due to the failure of appropriately classifying articles or items in a warehouse or fulfillment center, many conventional warehouse and order fulfillment centers are inefficient in terms of article processing. For example, articles are often not sufficiently classified to determine what articles can be efficiently packed and shipped together. As a result, rather than pack and ship products that may be desired by users in relatively fewer packages and shipments, many current order fulfillment systems inefficiently split orders into several shipments. Alternatively, for those orders intended to be delivered in several shipments, oftentimes order fulfillment systems fail to optimize the grouping of products in each shipment.
Even if orders are efficiently packed for shipping, most order fulfillment systems fail to allow a user to efficiently add items to a shipment at a time subsequent to when the order is placed. Users are often not aware of the deadline for adding articles to an order until after the deadline has passed, or, if the users are aware of the deadline, the users are often not apprised of the risk that adding to the order may adversely affect shipping time and cost. It therefore would be desirable to notify users when articles could be added to an order and shipped in a manner that would not impact the shipping time or cost.